"Oh for..."

Mariana sighed and sat down heavily on the edge of her bed. She had wanted to listen to some music while working out, but in trying to pull her headphones out of her bag, she found that the long cable that attached them to her phone had become hopelessly wrapped around itself and knotted.

"I'm going to have to get that sorted out before I do a fucking thing."

She was used to talking to herself. She had lived by herself for most of her adult life, and she was alone at the moment, so there was no one else to talk to. Silence annoyed her—the reason she wanted music to exercise to in the first place—but with the mess that the cord had made of itself, it would be a few minutes at least before there would be music.

"How does this always happen?" she asked nobody in particular as she held the two ends that would go in her ears, tied together less than an inch apart. It was almost enough to make her consider some of those in-ear buds, but those always got lost so easily.

So she set about figuring out the loops and twists of the headphone cord, holding it clear of herself and anything else, giving it a shake to see what came loose, tracing the winding path around, and around... Mari took a deep breath. Untie and straighten, she thought to herself. Nothing simpler. She found the connector on the end and delicately slipped it through a loop of cord. That's one, a good start. She traced the line with a finger so as not to lose track of where it was and where it needed to go.

"Nice and easy," she said aloud, "in and out." She grinned. It sounded like something Lucian might say to her. "Nice and easy, in and out." She took a deep breath as she unwound another coil. The fact that it pulled itself into a knot elsewhere along the line didn't bother her. She simply uncoiled and unwrapped what she could before again taking the end piece and passing it through another loop, undoing another knot, like undoing another thought.

She wasn't sure where that last idea came from, but as she untied another tangle she found herself letting go of the day's stresses and confusions. This was simple. Easy. Progress was visibile and measurable. She took a deep breath and let another struggle of the day's struggles go before unwinding a bit more of the wire.

"Nice... and easy..." she muttered, unwrapping a bit more of the cable, and the frustration she'd felt at first seeing the mess of wire slipped away from her. "In." She took a deep breath, passing the cord through itself. "And out." She let the air out as another coil fell away from the arm across the headband.

"Nice,"

one more length of cord dangled down,

"and..."

Mari's eyes grew heavy, watching the end of the cable drift lower, and lower,

"easy."

She lay back on the bed, watching the ceiling, headphones resting on her chest, a very satisfyingly unknotted wire pooled next to her. Her breathing was slow and deep and even. She had a brief thought about the tangled knot of ideas in her mind coming unraveled and then...